ARTISTIC STRATEGY AND THE RHETORIC OF POWER: Political Uses of Art from Antiquity to Present

by David Castriota

These 14 essays by artists, critics, and scholars from the 1984 Symposium at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University examine the uses of art, stressing visual media, to dis­seminate political messages in the West­ern world from the third millennium B.C. to the 20th century. We learn the practical needs and pur­poses of the artists who created political art and the patrons for whom these works were created. The essays also examine the rhetoric, the artistic vocabulary or iconography the artists employed to carry out their strategies. Contributors are Bernard Aptekar, Ja­queline Austin, Kenneth Bendiner, George Bournoutian, Richard Brilliant, David Castriota, Joseph Forte, George L. Hersey, Carol Herselle Krinsky, Jill Meredith, Edith Porada, Gail Harrison Roman, David Rosand, and Barbara Tischler. The contributors have illus­trated their essays with 85 black-and-white photographs.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1986